Michael and Patrick are two delightful tv writers on the show Trial and Error. Y2K is the fun and catchy nickname for the epidemic of fear around the year 2000. This episode is where it all goes down. See, programmers in the early days of computers decided to list dates with two digits, which made 1900 the same as 2000, which made everyone freak out and think that all computers would go bust at midnight on New Years Eve. That didn't happen.